All posts by Nathan Grayson
News
by Nathan Grayson (November 21st, 2010 at 9:29 am)
Nathan: “Hey everyone, it’s nearly Thanksgiving!”
Everyone [In unison]: “We’re in the UK. Well, mostly. We’re a fairly diverse group, but contrary to your ethnocentric view of the world, only a small minority of the Podgamer Legion hails from North America.”
Nathan: “Wow, that was really impressive! Did you guys rehearse that?”
Everyone [In unison again]: “Well, only that sentence and this handy follow-up phrase. Beyond that, however, asojfinwidmwoemckmsdf [unintelligible shouting].”
Nathan: “Oh. Well, um… ok. Anyway, you may not take a day each year to stuff your faces and celebrate Greek Hedonism (or whatever it is that informs my strange customs), but this year, Thanksgiving is still worth giving a crap about. Why? iThing games! Capcom, specifically, is having quite the sale. See for yourself: Phoenix Wright for £1.19/€1,59/$1.99, Mega Man II for 59p/€0,79/99¢, Dark Void Zero for 59p/€0,79/99¢, and 1942: First Strike for 59p/€0,79/99¢. Also, if you are from the US, there’s Cash Cab, Cash Cab: Las Vegas, and, er, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire – all for 99c. Aren’t you envious, Everyone? U-S-A! U-S-A! No? Ok, screw it, I’m moving to Canada.”
Universal News
by Nathan Grayson (November 18th, 2010 at 6:24 am)
Normally “free” and “not shit” are enough to warrant a bark and a point from us, your trusty App Store hounds at Podgamer, but today I’ve decided to mix things up. See, while Brutal Fantasy-Prologue is definitely free and also gleefully slashy (though generically so) enough to cross the rickety bridge out of Shitsville and into Mediocrity Zone, it’s also – dare I say it – profound. Actually, I don’t dare say it, because it’s really not. But it is profound’s plainer, lose-the-glasses-and-we-might-have-something sister, “interesting.”
See, in a slight twist on the normal App Store release formula, the full version of Brutal Fantasy won’t be out for another month, and this free Prologue – as you might expect – sports the beginnings of its storyline. What is that storyline, you ask? Uh, I think there was an evil knight or something like that. I didn’t really pay attention, but seeing as there are about three fantasy plots in existence, I’ve got a decent shot at being on the money. Point is, even if Brutal Fantasy-Prologue’s story physically spurted chopped liver out of my iPhone speaker, I wouldn’t have minded. It’s not important. What is important is the delivery of that story.
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Universal Review
by Nathan Grayson (November 16th, 2010 at 8:03 am)
Remember those House Of The Dead arcade machines from back in the day? You know, the ones with the big plastic guns that indirectly ate your first car in change? Weren’t they great? Well, Zombie Crisis 3D‘s a lot like that – only replace “great” with the most negative adjective you can think of. Horrendabysmal. Terribawfulstrosity. Dane Cook. Something along those lines.
How so? Oh, let me count the ways. First off, the basics: You’re a person. You have a gun. You shoot zombies. And that is – quite literally – all. Your movement is, of course, on-rails, so your eyes, legs, and head – everything aside from your itchy trigger finger – are the game’s to control. No big deal, though, right? Highly scripted, gore-spattered thrill rides are what this genre’s all about, after all. Problem is, Zombie Crisis doesn’t seem to have gotten the memo.
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Universal News
by Nathan Grayson (November 11th, 2010 at 6:36 am)
Just because you can download 30 million new games per second on your newfangled iPodpadpodiummajig doesn’t mean console games have lost their luster. But there’s a price to pay for all those fancy big-name bells and whistles, and it is – shockingly enough – money. Or, to quote one of this generation’s wisest cultural mantras: “Mo’ money.” However, more money spent on iPhone games directly correlates to less bitches, and that simply will not do.
Fortunately, a quartet of console imports have seen fit to trim a little off the top of their price tags, handily solving that incredibly pressing dilemma for you. First up, there’s Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars, which is now a (TURN BACK NOW OR RISK DEATH BY HORRIBLE PUN) steal at £3.99/€5,49/$6.99. Yes, it’s still a wee bit pricey, but don’t let its “ants having a gangfight” facade fool you; it’s far-and-away one of the best GTA games out there. And this comes from someone who normally hates Grand Theft Auto.
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Universal Review 
Podgamer Recommended
by Nathan Grayson (November 9th, 2010 at 8:46 am) WITH SPECIAL GUEST STARS
I’ve fallen in love with iThing “worm” games of late, and you all have to suffer for it. Yes, even you. Especially you. The latest one’s called Death Worm, but apparently it’s the original while the less intimidatingly named Super Mega Worm is the knock-off. Is PlayCreek LLC telling the truth? Or have giant world-ending worms figured out time travel, thus kicking off an eternal duel of Internet message board “first!” style one-upmanship? No idea. Both options seem equally likely.
What I do know is that Death Worm’s better. Well, mostly. For one, it’s made the giant, helicopter-gulping leap from NES-era graphics to something more befitting of, say, the Super Nintendo. And this comes only a month after Super Mega Worm. Score one for the time travel theory. Also, you get to pick and choose your pink, wriggly powers and stats as you level up, which – while not enormously game-altering – adds a degree of customization to your apocalyptic exploits. Long and fast or hard and strong? The (incredibly phallic) choice is yours!
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News
by Nathan Grayson (November 7th, 2010 at 5:20 am)
Now this is a story all about how a game’s price got flip-turned upside-down, and I’d like to take a moment just sit right there, I’m gonna tell you how I– okay, enough. I think they’re gone for now. Listen, this is former sitcom star and lyrical virtuoso Will Smith. I’ve been kidnapped by these “Podgamer” people – even after they chuckled nervously, awkwardly glanced at each other, and promised over and over that they wouldn’t kidnap me! I, frankly, was shocked.
Apparently, they thought it’d somehow be humorous if I – Will Smith, once “The Fresh Prince Of Bel Air” – wrote a post about The Prince Of Persia: Warrior Within‘s recent price drop to 59p/€0,79/99¢. Look, they’re nearly as idiotic as they are deranged, as these corpses dangling from meat hooks, partially dissected rodents, and – worst of all – dissenting opinions about Angry Birds clearly prove.
Oh Lord. They’re coming back. And they’re brandishing copies of “Wild Wild West”! Look, if this ever gets back to my family, tell them that Warrior Within is an enjoyable platformer, even if the Prince’s so-abrupt-it’ll-give-you-whiplash emo makeover makes the story about as charming as a squeeze of lemon juice in an open wound. Also that I love them, I guess. Also, AAAAAAIIIIIEEEEEEE.
Universal News
by Nathan Grayson (November 5th, 2010 at 6:14 am)
The zombie apocalypse is played out. Old hat. And I’ve come to terms with the nuclear apocalypse, so long as it makes the world exactly like Fallout: New Vegas. Point is, the end of the world is looking mighty anticlimactic these days. I need something new. Something different. Something like… a giant spiky worm? Sure, why the hell not.
You're a terrible person for simply looking at this screenshot, so just go ahead and buy the game.
Super Mega Worm‘s message is one I think we can all identify with: stop littering or a giant worm’s going to devour you. It’s a powerful and thought-provoking indictment of our current environmental policy – one that becomes all the more chilling when you consider that our wriggly pink Doombringer gains the power to blast lasers out of his mouth at level three.
Which is all to say that it’s wicked fun. Launching yourself out of the ground and skewering the squishy, screaming blood balloons otherwise known as human beings on your 32 rows of teeth is nearly as gratifying as it is sociopathic, and any game that uses live cattle as its central source of health is all right in our book. And hey, the full version’s only 59p/€0,79/99¢ right now, so why not? Plus, how can you say “no” to that face? The answer is that you can’t, because by the time you can see that face, it’s already too late.
Review
by Nathan Grayson (November 3rd, 2010 at 5:27 am)
Don’t know about you, but when I play games, I occasionally get frustrated. And by frustrated, I mean “orders of magnitude more upset than any sane human being should over an elaborate series of 1s and 0s.” So I get loud. I curse, shout, and speak in tongues not of this world. Controllers break. Millions die.
Square Enix’s latest iThing game, Voice Fantasy, operates on a similar principle. Thing is, Square wisely decided to put the incoherent babbling at the start of the game – probably so you wouldn’t end up with a cast of characters with names like “COCK HELL BALLS FUCK” and “GO GET SODOMIZED BY A BALROG.”
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Feature
by Nathan Grayson (October 31st, 2010 at 12:59 pm)
Free candy. Free reign to dress up like a total jackass and act like even more of one. Enough free booze to ensure you’ll have forgotten it all by the next morning. And best of all: not a single awkward/annoying family get-together in sight.
Yep, Halloween’s pretty hard to screw up. It’s the island of carefree holiday fun in the center of an ocean of obligation, guilt, stress, and more obligation. So, what’s the catch? Surely there’s a catch.
These horrible, horrible, horrible (did I mention horrible?) games are the catch. See, here’s how it works: the iTunes App Store is allegedly a bountiful land of riches and opportunity, but that’s an outright lie. It’s really a bombed-out crater of chaos, desolation, and desperation.
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News
by Nathan Grayson (October 29th, 2010 at 4:29 am) WITH SPECIAL GUEST STARS
It’s nearly Halloween, and you know what that means, right? Well, do you? We actually didn’t know it meant this: iThing game sales. Like, an almost comical number of them. But hey, back in my day, Halloween meant choking down candy dispensed by creepy neighbors and praying it wasn’t laced with poison or – worse – raisins, so I’m actually pretty all right with the holiday’s desperate ploy to appeal to a new generation.
Anyway, onto the gruesome price tag dismemberment! First up, there’s Sonic The Hedgehog 4 Episode 1, which is only a few seconds old in App Store years, but has been chopped from £5.99/€7,99/$9.99 to £3.99/€5,49/$6.99. Our very own Pod Lord Stu – in between lashes of his cruel whip because we weren’t thanking him hard enough for whipping us – said it’s “pretty much what you’d expect.” Do you like predictability? Does it make you feel safe? Then you should probably buy this game.
These games are cheap, but my undying respect is… entirely conditional. Hit the “continue” button or I’ll hate you.
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